The real story behind Attawapiskat’s problems

Making sense of Attawapiskat is not easy. The James Bay native community is synonymous with poverty. But it sits next to a diamond mine.

Its chief, Theresa Spence, has become famous across Canada because of the hunger strike she is waging on an island in the Ottawa River.

She insists she’ll only consume liquids until Prime Minister Stephen Harper meets with her (which he has agreed to do).

But what does Spence want from that meeting? This is less clear. She talks vaguely of a new relationship between First Nations and the federal government.

We now know, thanks to a detailed audit of Attawapiskat’s finances commissioned by Ottawa, that the First Nation’s bookkeeping leaves much to be desired.

Auditors from Deloitte and Touche concluded that roughly 80 per cent of the detailed spending transactions they investigated came with little or no paperwork, making it unclear how the monies were spent.

Yet oddly enough, another auditing firm — this one based in Timmins — has regularly been OK’ing the band’s annual financial statements, all of which are available on the Attawapiskat website.

Supporters of Spence have charged that the Harper government deliberately timed the release of the Deloitte and Touche audit to embarrass her. But so far no one has disputed its findings.

Indeed, band co-manager Clayton Kennedy (who is also Spence’s spouse) told the news site iPolitics that the auditor’s suggestions for improving Attawapiskat’s bookkeeping were “healthy” and that he agreed with them.

The contradictions of Attawapiskat are there for anyone who bothers to visit this remote community of 1,900. Except for an ice highway open only for a few weeks in the dead of winter, there are no roads that go anywhere.

But as Toronto Star reporter Raveena Aulakh noted, there are plenty of shiny new trucks.

When I first went to Attawapiskat, back in 1989, I wrote that housing was so crowded that nine people were routinely stuffed into one three-bedroom home.

Matters haven’t much improved. Indeed, overcrowding is so bad that even the United Nations weighed in last year.

A standard question from those who have visited Attawapiskat is why anyone still lives there. The James Bay coastline is a forbidding muskeg swamp. The fur trade, which for centuries drew the inland Cree to this coastline, is moribund.

The unemployment rate is about 70 per cent.

Those few who can get a job with the band government do all right. Staff salaries, according to the band website, run between $45,000 and $88,000. Elected councillors earn between $1,000 and $72,000. As chief, Spence received about $71,000 in 2010-11.

Costs are roughly double those in Toronto. So these salaries aren’t as generous as they might seem. But they are not bad.

Ironically for Attawapiskat residents, this is precisely the time when there should be something to do other than work for the band council or the school or the nursing station. De Beers operates a diamond mine to the east of the community. It produced 779,000 carats of diamonds in 2011. According to the Attawapiskat website, the company pays the First Nation a paltry $2 million a year in royalties, most of which is invested in stocks and bonds under a trust agreement.

Spence has said her community wants a bigger share of the De Beers pie.

But the mine’s most significant contribution should be jobs for the inhabitants of Attawapiskat. With a few exceptions, this hasn’t happened. Those who are unemployed aren’t trained. And training is difficult.

As the Star’s Aulakh reported, many kids in Attawapiskat don’t even bother attending school. They have no hope.

That is the real story. Bookkeeping is secondary.

Thomas Walkom is a news services columnist who writes in national affairs.